


Like Water

by saltslimes



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, baked with love, the unforgiving woods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-01 13:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17868305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Prompto goes missing after a hunt and Noctis is overcome with worry. And rage. But primarily worry.





	Like Water

**Author's Note:**

> to ellay, with love <3

The sun sank past the treetops a while ago, but it’s only when it burns the sky soft pink that Noctis shrugs out of whatever daze he was in. And he thinks,  _ Prom’s gonna love this. _ And he looks for him. Moments ago he’d been out of breath, he’d been running with the heavy footsteps of his companions behind him, and the occasional shout from Ignis. And then he just collapsed in the clearing, sat on the ground for a while to catch his breath.

Prompto said taking pictures of sunsets was cheesy and overdone. And then he’d take the pictures anyways. Noctis turns with Prompto’s name on his lips and he isn’t there. He looks back to Ignis and Gladio. Ignis is gripping his side and catching his breath. Gladio has his hands on his knees, but he straightens up after a moment.

“Where’s Prom?” the first time he says it it comes out harsh and cracked, because he’s still out of breath, and his mouth is full of thick saliva. Ignis glances around.

“He said he was right behind me,” Gladio says. He cracks his neck and looks back towards the trees. “Should be any minute.”

But there’s no sound from the trees, only whistling silence. Noctis has dirt under his nails. His socks feel like they became part of his body they’re so drenched in sweat. The sun is out of sight. He pulls his phone from his pocket and is already hitting Prompto’s name before he remembers in the car, Prompto sighing as he dropped his phone into the glove compartment.

“The battery on this thing sucks,” he’d said, but brightened up in a minute, flipping through images on his camera.

“Maybe if you’d spent any money on your phone instead of that camera,” Gladio said.

“What would the point of that be?”

The sun is out of sight. Already, the temperature is dropping. Noct takes a step towards the trees.

“Noctis,” Ignis says. His voice is absurdly even, like he’s totally resistant to the panic Noct can already feel welling up.

“It’s already getting dark. If we don’t make camp now we don’t make it at all,” Gladio says. There’s a lot of finality that Noctis thinks has no right to be in his voice. “Our tracks are easy to spot. He probably got distracted by something. And he’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“He knows to head for the haven,” Ignis says softly. And it’s not far from the trees, Noctis can see it from where they are. He knew his way out of the woods. Prompto doesn’t get lost easily. He lets this thoughts loosen his chest. He follows Ignis and Gladio to make camp.

But by the time dinner is ready the stars are out, and there’s no sound of Prompto. Noctis makes it about three steps past the haven before Gladio hauls him back. He almost warps out of the hold, just because he’s pent up with anxiety and frustration. 

“It’s too risky, Noctis, come on.”

“Then what is it for Prompto? He’s out there in the woods, he probably thinks we  _ ditched _ him! Just left him behind.” Noctis squirms but Gladio holds firm until he goes limp. “What if he’s hurt?”

“Then it would be even more foolish to venture into the woods unprepared. We have a limited supply of curatives.”

“He’s not a baby. I know he acts like one half the time, but he can handle himself,” Gladio says. He lets go of Noct. And he wants to round on Gladio, what’s to break something, wants to warp into the woods, but he knows they’re right; as much as he might want to, he can’t risk the world on his friend. And with their sorry supply of curatives and first aid supplies, Ignis has a point.

He settles for kicking over one of the folding chairs and going to bed. He’s so angry and terrified he thinks that he won’t sleep, that he can’t. But he closes his eyes and slips away almost instantly.

[#]

Okay, so. Okay. Don’t panic is probably something. That’s a Gladio thing to say, Prompto thinks. Don’t panic, yeah. Stop the bleeding. Awesome, job number two. He tears away part of his vest and uses it to wrap the cut on his forearm. Everything else is small enough to be considered a minor scrape.

It got dark faster than he expected. He takes stock of his weapon, and he can almost see the disappointment on their faces.

“You seriously got lost?”

Yeah, you guys got like a minute on me while I was holding off the voreteeth and I managed to get completely lost. In what Prompto knows is a small stretch of woods. He can see blood marking one of the trees on his left, so he’s been through here already. That system was stupid, also, because it’s about to be too dark to see.

It’s daemon hours, by now, and he can hear the screams as something tears into something else. He slides himself into the gap between two fallen logs and grips his pistol tightly. A night is only a few hours, once you get past the evening. He can make it a few hours. Probably without going crazy, as well as without getting mauled by anything.

He just has to stay calm, stay hidden, focus. Keep his weapon ready. Not think about being hungry. Flex his fingers periodically when the cold starts to stiffen them.

One minute he was watching Gladio’s back, broad shoulders, light spilling through the leaves. And then hsi companions melted into the foliage like water in dry dirt.

The sound of things in the dark advances, but he doesn’t feel the slightest pull of sleep. His body is singing with energy. He feels like he’s at the top of a rollercoaster and the drop will never come, whether he wants it to or not.

He closes his eyes only for a second. Moonlight speckles the wet leaves. Insects have gone still from the cold.

[#]

The morning air tastes like smoke and Noctis crawls free of the tent but zips it back up behind him. It’s too much to ask for Ignis to sleep through that. He’s to the edge of the haven when he hears his name strike the air with the same force as a spell.

He looks back to argue or to say something he’ll regret or he doesn’t know what, but Ignis’ expression falls apart, and he takes a sudden step forward. Noctis looks back, and there he is, shuffling out from between the trees with a relieved but shakey grin. His hair has a few twigs tangled in it. His left arm is blood down to the fingertips. It looks like he dipped his arm nearly up to the shoulder in a bucket of old tomato sauce.

And his face is pale, and his eyes are distant, but he’s grinning.

“Heyo,” he says. He gives a small wave with his good hand. Noctis feels him drop his pistol back into the armiger. The sun is rising behind them, and Prompto is squinting into the light, and Noctis takes a step forward, but then Prompto staggers, and he throws himself into warp to close the distance between them.

Prompto’s skin is like a glass of ice water. He stinks like blood and dirt, so metal on metal.

“Sorry, I got a little turned around,” he says. Noctis can’t speak. Instead he just crushes Prompto into his chest, buries his face in filthy blond hair.

“H-hey, it’s all good buddy. Someone had to have your backs.”

By now Gladio and Ignis are up the incline, Gladio rubbing sleep from his eyes and Ignis eyeing Prompto’s injury with measured concern.

The sun is coming up on the haven. It’s coming up but the ground remains cold. Ignis helps Noctis haul Prompto back to camp. Gladio could have done it faster, probably, more easily. But that would require Noctis to let go of him, and he’s not about that at the moment. The cut isn’t good, and the potions don’t do much for an injury so old. Prompto insists that he’s fine, but he looks drained in every sense of the word.

He falls asleep in one of the chairs while Ignis is making breakfast. Noct can’t take his eyes off the fresh white bandages on his arm, his fingers, his neck and his forehead. Gladio stops mid-rant about how easy their tracks were to spot, and Noctis looks up to see why he no longer has to smack Gladio.

Prompto is slumped to one side in the chair, neck bent at an obviously uncomfortable angle. His lashes are long enough to touch the skin beneath his eyes. Noctis has never noticed this before, but now that he has, he wonders why he didn’t.

Gladio breaks the silence after a moment where no one seemed to take a breath.

“Let’s take him in, huh?” he says. Noctis lets Gladio do it this time, because he has to admit, Gladio makes it look easy. Inside the tent Prompto stirs but doesn’t really wake. Noctis sits in the middle of Ignis and Gladio’s bedrolls with his knees tucked up to his chest. After a while he fiddles on his phone. Ignis ducks in to ask him if he will please come out so they can discuss turning in the hunt, and he flat out refuses.

And he feels spoiled in almost every sense of the word, but he doesn’t care that much.

Prompto wakes up when the sun has passed its highest point. He wakes up slowly, and Noctis gives him a bottle of water.

“How do you feel?”

“Terrible. My head hurts.”

“It’s the blood loss.”

“You sound like Gladio.”

“But less of a dick, right?” Noctis asks, as if it’s perfectly easy. As if he’s in no way short of breath. Prompto laughs and then winces.

“Yeah. Less of a dick.”

Noctis wishes they could get in the car and drive somewhere where they’d be safe, where he wouldn’t have to see his friends’ blood all the time. But the end of the world doesn’t work like that.

So he settles for closing the space between them again. For pressing his lips to Prompto’s bruised cheek, soft enough not to hurt. He picks the twigs from Prompto’s hair, and then, to be fair, he schools him brutally in King’s Knight. 

“I’ll kick your ass when I have the usual amount of blood,” Prompto mumbles.

“Yeah right,” Noctis says. Prompto drops the phone among the blankets, and Noctis pulls him back in, pulls him close enough that he feels like he can almost hear his heartbeat. If he focusses hard enough, he can almost see the little auras of magic around all living things.

If he focussed on seeing it, really focussed, he could see Prompto lit up like a searchlight against metal. He’d see the light come off him like sunlight on still water.

**Author's Note:**

> it's unbeta'd cuz i decided to speedrun it,  
> please excuse my frivolous metaphors  
> also sorry to my pal who wont read this but whose old man fic i was supposed to be betaing


End file.
